Her Sweet Surrender: The First Crush Is the Deepest. Nina Harrington
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from the top of the piano. Then Amber paused and ran two fingertips along the surface of the keys without pressing them firmly enough to make music.
Only as he watched, her lovely face twisted into a picture of sadness and regret and pain that was almost unbearable for him to see.
He turned around to face her, but it was too late—the moment was lost as Amber suddenly realised that she was being observed. A bright smile wiped away the trauma that had been all there to see only a few seconds earlier, startling him with how quickly she could turn on her performance face, and she lowered the lid on the piano. ‘Plaster dust,’ she whispered. ‘Not a good idea.’
‘Don’t let me put you off playing,’ Sam quipped and gestured towards the piano with his screwdriver. ‘I brought my own earplugs in case you were holding a rehearsal session.’
‘Very funny, but your ears are safe. I am not playing today.’ She took a breath and raised her plaster cast towards him. ‘My wrist is hurting.’
Her chin lifted and she angled her head a little. ‘You can tell your lovely readers that I simply cannot tolerate second best. My standards are just as high as ever.’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘Right. It’s just weird that you haven’t even tried to play. It used to be the other way around. I spent a lot of time trying to drag you away from the nearest keyboard.’
Sam looked into her face with a grin but her gaze was firmly fixed on the scarves in her bag.
‘That was a long time ago, Sam. People change.’ And with that she turned away and strolled back to her bedroom. In silence.
As he watched her slim hips sway away from him, every alarm bell in his journalist’s mind started ringing at the same time.
Music used to be the one thing that gave Amber joy. She used to call it her private escape route away from the chaos that was her mother’s life.
Well, it didn’t look like that now.
Something was not right here. And it was not just her wrist that was causing Amber pain.
And, damn it, but he cared more than he should.
* * *
Amber ran her fingers over the few dresses still left in her wardrobe and stifled a self-indulgent sniff. She had loved wearing those evening gowns which were now on their way to a shop specialising in pre-loved designer wear. But she had plenty of photos of the events to remind her what each dress had looked like if she wanted a walk down memory lane.
Which she didn’t.
She had never been sentimental about clothes like some of the other performers. There was no lucky bracelet or a corset dress which was guaranteed to have her grace the cover of the latest celebrity magazine. They were just clothes—beautiful clothes which had made her feel special and beautiful when she had worn them. But clothes just the same.
So why did it feel so weird to know that she would never wear them again?
Amber sniffed again, then mentally scolded herself.
This was pathetic! She was still Amber Sheridan DuBois. She was still the girl with the first class degree in music and the amazing career. The same Amber who had flown so very high in a perfect sky which seemed to go on for ever and ever.
Until she had gone to India and fate had sent her tumbling back down to earth with a bang.
The sound of an electric screwdriver broke through her wallow in self-pity and Amber shivered in her thin top. All in the past. She was over the worst and her wrist would soon be better. She was lucky to have come through the infection more or less intact, and that was worth celebrating.
So why did she feel like collapsing onto her bed and sleeping for a week?
She was overtired. That was it. Idiot. The doctors had warned her about overdoing it, then her mother and Heath and now so had Kate and Saskia—and Parvita, who had offered to delay the wedding because she felt so guilty about inviting her friends to perform a concert at the orphanage. She had had no clue that there was a meningitis outbreak sweeping across Kerala.
Of course she had told Parvita not to be so silly—the astrologers had chosen a perfect wedding day and that was precisely what Parvita was going to have. A perfect wedding back in her home village without having to worry about an exhausted concert pianist who should be in Boston resting in glorious solitude at her stepbrother’s town house.
Pity that she had not factored in the mess in her apartment, and surviving a birthday party at Elwood House. And then there was the ex-boyfriend who had suddenly popped into her life again.
Yes. Sam might have something to do with her added stress levels.
Good thing he had no idea how her body was on fire when he was in sight or she would never live it down.
He had no idea that she had tossed and turned most of the night with an aching wrist, wondering would have happened if she had fallen into Sam’s arms that night of her eighteenth birthday. Would they still be together now? Or would their relationship have fizzled out with recriminations and acrimonious insults?
She would never know, but there was one thing she was sure about.
Ever cell in her body was aware that Sam Richards was only a few feet away from her in the next room. His boyish grin was locked into her memory and, whether she liked it or not, her treacherous body refused to behave itself when he was so close. Her hands were shaking, her legs felt as though they belonged to someone else and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was supposed to be resting. Nothing at all.
All she had to do was survive a few more days and Sam would be out of her life.
Amber rolled her stiff and sore shoulders and rearranged her sling.
Shaking her head in dismay, she stretched up to tug at the boxes on the top shelf of her dressing room but they slid right back into the corner and out of her reach.
Grabbing the spare dining room chair Kate had used earlier to find the hat boxes, Amber popped the headphones of her personal stereo in her trouser pocket over her ears, and hummed along to the lively Italian baroque music as she jumped up onto the chair and stretched out on tiptoe to reach the far back corner of the shelf.
She had just caught hold of the handle of her old vanity case and was tugging it closer when something touched the bare skin below her trouser leg.
As she whipped around in shock, her left hand tried to grab the chair, which had started to wobble alarmingly at the sudden movement, throwing her completely off balance. The problem was that her fingers were already tightly latched onto the vanity case and as it swung off the shelf it made contact with the side of Sam’s head as he stepped forwards to grab hold of her around the middle and take the weight of her body against his.
She dropped the case, and it bounced high before settling down intact.
Not that she noticed. Her fingers were too busy clutching onto Sam Richards as she stared into his startled face.
Time seemed to stand still as she started to slide down the front of his hard body, her silky top riding up as she did.
Sam reacted by holding her tighter, hitching her up as though she was weightless, his arms linked together under her bottom, locking her body against his.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said, trying to sound casual, as though it was perfectly normal to have a conversation while you were being held up against the dusty T-shirt of the man who had once rocked your world. ‘Good thing I didn’t hit anything important.’
He bit his lower lip, as though he was ready to hit back with some comment and then thought better of it, then one corner of his mouth turned up and he slowly, slowly, started to bend his knees until her feet were on the floor. But all the time his arms were locked behind her back as though he had no intention of letting her go.
Why should he? Amber thought. Sam was having way too much fun.
Strange